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As the highly anticipated X-Men TV spin-off arrives, creator Noah Hawley reveals whether there will be any cameos and what's happening with the next season of Fargo

Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil, Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, Agent Carter… If you’re a Marvel comic book fan with a lot of time on your hands, there has never been a better time to be alive. High-kicking saturation point is on the horizon: 2017 will also see the arrival of The Defenders, Iron Fist, Inhumans and The Punisher.

And then there’s Legion, the new series – starring Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens – based on the character from Marvel Comics’ X-Men series. But Legion is different. For one, the rights to the characters have been owned by Fox since 1994. So rather than being made by Marvel’s television arm, this is an FX Production, made only in association with Marvel, and will be shown on Fox, instead of Marvel TV’s frequent home of Netflix.

It also boasts a creator as in demand as Noah Hawley, the mastermind behind the TV adaptation of the Coen brothers’ film Fargo and the author of the bestselling novel Before the Fall. And despite this comic book saturation, he has willingly waded into this complex, multi-layered, over-stuffed superhero world. Although he didn’t realise quite how much at the time.

“The first conversations I had for Legion were right as the first year of Fargo was ending,” he explains when we meet in London at the end of last year. “Daredevil hadn’t even begun then so when signing on I had no real sense of the onslaught that was coming. In the two years since this has been in development, the landscape has changed entirely.”

He’s not remotely deterred by the change, however. Instead he’s rightly confident in his ability to make a comic book show that can comfortably occupy its own space in that crowded landscape. When Fox decided that they wanted to bring the X-Men universe to the small screen, they allowed him to choose which character to base the series on. So Hawley plumped for David Haller/Legion, the son of Charles Xavier (who is played by Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy in the films).

“I always feel like you can take a genre that has a familiar structure to it and then reinvent it as a character piece. Suddenly what’s old is new again,” he says. “With Fargo I adapted a movie without any of the characters or the story. Yet somehow it feels like Fargo. So can I take this character and this concept and tell my own story and have it feel exactly like a story that the fans love – but not be constrained by somebody else’s plot choices. Other than David, I’ve populated the show with characters of my own invention.”

Dan Stevens stars as Legion

He’s aware, of course, of the continuity minefield that a person walks into when adding to the enormous collection of existing comic book adaptations. But then, that’s what Marvel’s there for. “I don’t have to look very far for the experts,” he says.

Avid fans shouldn’t expect to see Legion’s X-Men storylines played out on the screen, however. Hawley isn’t interested in making a straightforward genre show. For him, taking a familiar genre or a familiar trope and doing something unexpected is part of the process. “When Fox asked me if I’d consider taking on The X-Men universe for television, my first thought was, what would you do with those stories or that genre that hasn’t been done,” he explains.

In that, he has certainly achieved. Legion is a complex, beautifully stylish production that bends reality at Hawley’s whim.

Rachel Keller and Dan Stevens

In the comic books, Legion suffers from dissociative identity disorder and each of the multiple personalities controls one of his superpowers. On TV, it’s far less clear cut than that. He’s diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is a different illness, but that’s not necessarily the framework of his powers or his personality.

“Like with The Wizard of Oz, we’re not sure if all of what we’re seeing is in his head,” Hawley says. “There’s a sense that all these people are pieces of David but it’s not in a literal multiple personality sense.”

And if all that doesn’t sound trippy enough, Hawley has drawn much inspiration from the work of Pink Floyd – even down to naming Legion’s love interest Syd Barrett (played by Rachel Keller). “On Dark Side of the Moon, there’s a sense that the music never stops. You get these voices and laughter and sound effects and it engages your imagination. It’s a story about madness that tries to drive you mad on some level. That was attractive to me as someone who is trying to create a similar mindspace,” he says.

Dan Stevens as Legion

This was the brief that he took to his regular composer Jeff Russo, who went out and found a first generation synthesiser like the one used on the album.

Being an X-Men spin-off, of course, means there's an opportunity for some seriously exciting cameos. And X-Men director Bryan Singer has said that Legion with link up with the films. But Hawley feels they have something to prove first. "It’s hard to be the newcomer knocking on the door saying, 'You guys should all come and do this cool thing with us... besides, we’re not really sure if it’s the same reality that the X-Men movies are in."

Fortunately the cast itself is exciting enough. Jean Smart, who also appears in Fargo, jumped at the chance to play Melanie Bird, an unconventional psychiatric therapist. And Aubrey Plaza, who’s known for playing the weird, deadpan council worker April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation and for being even weirder and more deadpan when appearing as herself on chat shows, plays Legion’s friend Lenny – a woman who has her own mental health problems and history of substance abuse.

Aubrey Plaza as Lenny

Which begs the question, is the real life Aubrey Plaza the same as what we see on screen?

“She’s hard to read; I like her a lot,” begins Hawley. “But, no. Like many comedy people she’s actually a very reserved, calm and thoughtful person who plays a role. But there is a sense of guardedness that appeals to me in her persona. She is the most deadpan person, unlike Dan Stevens whose truth is on his face. She’s much more guarded and controlled.”

At the time of speaking, Hawley is juggling a lot of TV work. As well as doing promotion for Legion, he was also writing the scripts for the third season of Fargo, which was happening, he said, “in my spare time”. There’s also a lot to live up to, with the second season attracting even greater acclaim than the first. The third sees another cast change, this time with Ewan McGregor playing twins called Emmit and Ray Stussy. Production began in January, and is due to return to our screens in the spring.

Noah Hawley with Legion stars Katie Aselton and Aubrey Plaza

And then there’s another very ambitious new project in Hawley’s pipeline: a TV adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle. For a writer with such a cult following, Vonnegut’s work has proven to be a challenge for screenwriters thanks to his dry, satirical tone, unusual structure and minutely balanced themes. Much like that of Hawley, Vonnegut’s work is too complex and too expansive to be shoehorned into a particular genre – Cat’s Cradle, for example, is as much about a fictional religion as it is about the narrator’s research trip for a book about the inventor of the atom bomb as it is about a sci-fi substance that can turn water into a solid.

“For some reason I tend to take on the stuff that people are really passionate about,” says Hawley drily. “If you make a list of people you don’t want to offend it’s Vonnegut readers, comic book fans and Coen brothers enthusiasts.

“That book, and his work in general, is very hard to adapt because it’s unlike any other story. In a two hour movie it’s a very hard thing to pull off because a movie tends to be a plot delivery device and surrounded by character. So what’s exciting about a 10 hour version is you can do all the stuff that is actually the identity of the book. The scope of the book is huge but it’s a very slight book at the same time. But it’s going well.”